Sex and Lucía

Ratings & Reviews

Ratings & Reviews

A diagrammatic movie - one falls into the next sinkhole before there is ever time to comprehend one's current orientation. Emotional orientation is similarly confused, as everything is clouded by the viciousness of sex and the narcotic, dreamlike forms that desire takes on. Both of these factors contribute to the nauseous, sleep-paralysis feeling that the film leaves you with. The apocalyptic evocations of the beach.

I possibly shouldn't review a film I only caught half of...but I will be finding the second half as I found the first so captivating. It's fairly tried and tested shifting time frames give great opening pace and the dialogue- less sections leave space for questions to linger in the air.

How am i supposed to forget the scene where Lucia was having a sexual intercourse with a random guy at the ocean, in the middle of the night, under the moon and stars. It's like every girl fantasy right? Or not?

Well, it was less risible and more comprehensible on a second viewing than when I first saw it on release. Overheated, over ripe, over long, over ambitious but still strangely moving even with that hilarious final sequence featuring a lighthouse and a hole to the centre of the island in close proximity. Symbolism? Surely not.

Saw this when I was 18 - remembered the sex. Saw it now, aged 30 - appreciate the themes of storytelling, cosmic interference and the creative process. Sex and Lucia occurs in a totally self contained world with it's own internal laws (as all films do, but here it is pronounced). What works is the consistency of tone - it could have derailed so many times. Like the tone and you'll like this movie.

Some good moments & I liked the way the movie looks like a home video on VHS (I don't know if it's to do with the choices made while filming or the fact that it's from 2001). However, overall I was left uninspired. The poetic interludes only remain poetic where the characters keep their mouths shut. The trick where a writer's consciousness blends with reality is a dangerous one - hard to get right.

8/10 - The postmodern device of writing your own story, blurring reality with fiction meets a bright sunlit spanish coast where everything is white and light blue, meets a lot of erotica, meets David Lynch, meets even more erotica. At first it will confuse you, but you will be able to figure most of it out. And if you dont like it, you can fall through a hole and go back to the middle to rewrite your ending ;-)